Why NASA chief said prayer is the way to go with an asteroid

About a month after a meteor hit the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, a U.S. House panel led by Texas’ Rep. Lamar Smith, put scientists on the hot seat, asking if the United States is prepared for such an event.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden was widely reported to have told them that if an asteroid is headed to Earth, his advice is to “pray.” He did say that, but as is often the case, it’s not the whole story.

“The funding did not come,” Bolden said. “And so the answer to you is, if it’s coming in three weeks, uh, pray.”

“Unfortunately, the number of undetected potential ‘city killers’ is very large,” said John Holdren, assistant to President Barack Obama for science and technology. “It’s in the 10,000 range or more.”

Congress has directed NASA to improve methods to be able to identify and track 90 percent of meteors 140 meters or more in diameter by 2020. That’s task that will likely not be achieved until 2030, using current budget estimates, Bolden said.

The estimate was not “particularly reassuring” to the committee’s chairman, Smith, who said he’d look into “possible budgetary assistance.”

Bolden said scientists need more telescopes in outer space. “Ground-based systems are great. … But if you really want to find and detect asteroids and near-earth objects early enough that we can do something, you want that vehicle to be in space,” he said.

To do all this, NASA needs a lot of “budgetary assistance.” Check out Holdren’s estimates:

Detection efforts = $100 million a year.
Mitigation efforts = $2 billion between now and 2025.
Air Force Space Command = $200-300 million a year.